Asea, Can You Say?

I’m
Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? And because it’s that
time of year, seems to me that the only thing people want to read are the directions
on a can of bug spray, and they do so with the attention span of a United
States president who lost a popular vote by a boatload. So I’m declaring my
independence from delivering a full-blown essay this week, what the fock.

Anyways,
I don’t know what it is about this time of year, but it seems every time I turn
around these days it’s that time of year again, I kid you not. Cripes, and now
it’s that Summerfest time, again, and listen (and don’t stop me if you’ve heard
this one before ’cause we don’t have time): After all these years when it comes
to this time of year, year-in, year-out, if you even begin to think I could
possibly have any gas left to pass through another essay on that annual musical
racket down there by our lakefront—then you are abso-focking-lutely correct. Of
course I do.

The
gas might be a tad overripe, but it smells like this: I’ve pored over and
indeed rifled through all the big gig guides and lists and brochures and pamphlets
and…HEY! Know what? I think the people in charge of that shebang have gone deaf
from all that LOUD ROCK GUITAR MUSIC HELLABALOO they got all the time down
there, I kid you not.

I
think those people have gone to deaf because each and every year, simply as a
professional courtesy, I keep asking aloudly over and over for two simple
things at the grounds in the Summerfest: A TOPLESS TENT and a BOURBON TENT—like
it would really kill the hippies who run that fest-joint to have a little
something for which the common man to enjoy himself by. It may come as an
unexpected thunderclap to some, but we’ve been known to drop a couple, three bucks
here and there, now and then, for entertainment purposes, what the fock.

But
no, everything’s got to be for the young people all the time today. It’s like
nothing at all from when me and my gang were members of the young people, lo,
those years ago. No sir, in the three-channel TV days of our black & white
youth, ’tis a rare-ass occasion it was when there was a good goddamn something
to do. Many a long, beautiful, and long some more, summer day was spent
standing around in some kid’s dinky back yard locked in the passionate debates
of our day—like whose older sister had the biggest jugs. Or we made plans for
the future—like how the hell to come by 20-focking-cents for a comic book and
ice-cold bottle of Squirt.

So
naturally, you can see how flummoxed I can be to imagine how different for a
14-, 15-year-old kid now today it is, what with all the places to go and things
to do for them, not to mention the computers and super-phones they can dick
around on for hours, with learning where to send the pictures of their
pubescent junk.

That’s
probably why we didn’t shoot up the schools back then like they’ve been known
to do today. We were too bored. Why spend all that time and energy on blowing
up the school? Just quit—fock it. That’s what we did.

And
the old-school family values. You could hardly take a leak without having to
have the whole family along, for crying out loud. Sometimes you could go to
some store by yourself, sure, but after five minutes inside with some dickhead
clerk on your butt for the entire 300 seconds, you’d be told to scram. There
was no telling what a kid by himself might try to get away with.

Cripes,
it’s a heck of a thing how a half-a-focking-century can fly by when you lose
track sometimes, ain’a? Seems like just the other day I was listening to Pat
Boone try to croon “Tutti Frutti” through the AM transistor, and today I can
enjoy hardcore pornography on my TV, if I were so inclined.

I
wish I was a kid today instead of then when I was, you betcha. Heck, I’d
probably even go to the Summerfest and hope adults weren’t around to screw
things up since what adults seem best at is to screw things up, same as it ever
was, what the fock, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.

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